Here’s the path I took to my conclusion:

First – Extremely Huge Makeovers: Though I tend to not watch a ton of television, Extreme Makeover is one I catch more than others.  It’s a guilty pleasure, indeed. I love home building problem-solving, and the emotion around helping a family in need gets me every time.  However, I’ve certainly noticed that the “made over” homes (a.k.a. complete tear down/re-build) always end up being “extremely” over the top.  So, reading Dawn Wotapka’s WSJ article about the show’s decision to scale things back was not a surprise.  After all, it’s a bit tough to tout energy efficient appliances (from you surely know where – if you’ve EVER watched a few minutes of the show) in a house with very high ceilings, huge kitchens/living spaces and a bedroom for pretty much every last being.  Argh.  The last episode I watched resulted in a middle school-sized home for an admittedly incredible, adoption-embracing family with nine kids!  Remember those long ago days when families of 5+ regularly lived in 1000 square foot or so structures, sharing bedrooms and emphasizing not indoor television watching, but outdoor – use the whole neighborhood – entertainment?  Where is residential building/development headed now?  Consumers demand walkable neighborhoods, interaction with neighbors, and energy efficiency (more on that later), and are now starting to be more willing to take that in a smaller package.

Second – Not “Green” but EE: I had a quick call with Suzanne Shelton the other day in preparation for another piece I’m writing on consumers and energy.  One thing she pointed out during our conversation very strongly resonated: consumers do not go for “green” as much as they go for “energy efficiency” (EE).  Interesting subtlety in word choice, isn’t it? Those of us who have been writing about sustainability know that “green” is a loaded word, and, according to Shelton Group research, consumers are equally suspicious when they hear the term.  This is not so with energy efficiency – a phrase/label that reflects smarts, wisdom, and seems to stir up a competition factor to which many a human responds (“my home is more efficient than yours!”).  Plus, EE just seems p-r-a-c-t-i-c-a-l, and not pie-in-the-sky.  Energy efficiency, not “green,” is the thing to tout in the home building industry.

Third – women-centric = design smart: Finally, and, as is so often the case in my work, it all gets back to women.  The recent WSJ article by Alyssa Abkowitz presented the “news” (my emphasis) that women are the key market for today’s home builders and developers.  No huge surprise, that. But, here are two sentences that got to the real point – smarter design:

And even woman-centric builders acknowledge that men are just as likely as women to crave roomy closets or sleek countertops. “Much of what we propose is smart design,” admits Design Basics exec Paul Foresman.

Women have long demanded aesthetic and practical details, but the male-dominated/oriented building industry took a while to learn.  Yet, they have trained builders toward smarter (gender neutral) design that takes into account things that women seek and men also appreciate (in addition to the roomy closets), such as good security and low maintenance.  To that list I’d add – energy efficiency (as per the above point).  June 2009 research by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found that women, in fact, were the primary decision makers on energy, and business women lead the way. 98 percent of women business owners have cut their electricity use at home and 77 percent have done the same at their businesses.

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My take on “marketing to women” has always been that the way women buy is key not because women are so amazingly different and difficult to serve.  My contention is that the women’s market is important because it indicates the ways that your toughest customers (male or female) will be making their purchase decisions.  Women “represent” the core thinking in the consumer market for many a good or service.  As such, how they think, are influenced and make decisions will continue to be hugely important in the sustainability realm.

So, who cares about “green,” I mean energy efficient,  homes?  No one.  But, women do take the lead in looking for smaller footprints (take note Extreme Makeover), “energy efficiency” and other smart design details.  Serve their ways, and what you have, my friends, is a more sustainable way of building, living and serving ALL consumers.

I’ve long believed that a great way to teach marketing to women is to start by taking a hard look at plain, old excellent marketing.  The idea is to make reaching the women’s market less “a whole new thing,” and more a focused version of what a lot of skilled marketers do already.  Start with the common ground or the existing “good” of previous marketing efforts, and re-build from there.  Remember: women are not from outer space, they are just tough customers.

Below, I offer the latest from Walker and Elliott as examples, and note key marketing to women influences in the campaigns:

1) Rob Walker’s column on Naked Pizza.  Women’s market influence: there is more than one consumer entry point, from just wanting good tasting pizza to seeking full-on explanations and long blog posts about the ins/outs of nutrition and food supply. This serves the pizza buyer, male or female, who is more linear (“just give me the pizza already…”) as well as the one who is taking a more holistic view of the product/brand and experience (“wow, this really can be healthy for my family and I love learning more about nutrition!”).  It is typical of a woman’s buying process to be more holistic and to appreciate a variety in depth of information – but delivering such is really a best practice in marketing, in general.

2) Stuart Elliott’s piece on Cloudveil’s new ad campaign.  Women’s market influence: The humor appeals to anyone who has or aspires to have an outdoor sports obsession so strong it gets in the way of other life obligations.  The effort also offers up an easy solution for making amends.  Outdoor sports fanatic clothing is not gender-specific but passion-specific, so the Cloudveil tone appeals to both men and women.  And, though tongue in cheek, the campaign really does offer a solution for the time-starved consumer.  (Usually, the time-starvation comes from daily responsibilities and obligations and is considered an especially big issue for multi-tasking women.  But, THIS time it comes from the choice of a man or woman to do something fun instead!)  Getting the humor right and providing a “solution” are best practices in marketing that are extra effective with women.

These campaigns – and all good campaigns that have some foundation in marketing to women truths – reflect an awareness of how THE CONSUMER thinks and goes about making a purchase decision, as opposed to what great features and specifics the BRAND wants to tell the world about.  Old-fashioned and ineffective marketing was not guided by the consumer much at all.  Twenty-first century, effective marketing is being guided and inspired by how women – or the toughest customers they represent, male or female – make purchasing decisions.

Go ahead and dig around in your own best practice history.  I bet you’ll find some marketing to women basics therein – like offering several layers of information (rather than assuming there’s one) to educate about a fairly complex product, or  connecting your customers to one another around a shared passion or shared sense of humor.

My point is: who cares if serving a “women’s way” was part of the plan?  The resulting best practices in marketing are the kicker.

As Geoffrey A. Fowler wrote in the Wall Street Journal of their effort, rather than go with a design firm’s idea to use a “pinkified” [note: my word, not Fowler's] palette, the Blue Nile team…

“…decided to emphasize an upscale, rather than effeminate, look. It removed a left-hand navigation bar (still standard on many e-commerce sites), leaving space on the screen for much larger — and more artistically cropped — photos of products. The changes are intended to make the experience more akin to window shopping.”

The specifics include an easier way to customize ring designs and the fact that much of the shopping can be contained on a single page, without a lot of clicking back and forth.  Blue Nile, like so many other jewelery retailers, knows that its core customer is men buying engagement rings, but what they also know is that women are still tremendously influential in where/how their rings are purchased/selected (they are a “shadow consumer” as it were).

Will Blue Nile’s choice to revise their site in these ways alienate men? It shouldn’t.  Their approach was smart – in identifying and serving the qualities and functionality that women tend to expect from high-end fashion or retail sites.  What they’ve done is go much further than a patronizing palette switch.  Their re-design seems to have been guided and inspired by the women who are the end-wearer of the ring, but in a way that also serves the typical buyer very well – and usually better.

Engagement rings are an interesting product because they are very uniquely and visibly purchased by a male (for the most part) under MUCH influence by – and to the delight of – a female.  That makes this an extreme case from which other traditional brands in traditional industries can learn.  Your products may long have been perceived as for men alone, but these days you must acknowledge that women are in that picture too – either as direct consumers or as heavy influencers of the purchase.

Your response to the challenge could be one of two:  1) to tackle the problem superficially, with the wave of a pink wand, OR, 2) to dig deep below that surface and identify/leverage the characteristics of the most demanding customer (who is often a woman).  For her, as well as your long-established male market, a waving wand will have no power.

Most brands today are marketing to both men and women simultaneously, but to varying degrees.  Even for the more traditional categories, like engagement rings (or cars, or tools or finances) – the goal should be to serve the high expectations of your female customers transparently.  Your core male customer, who has been there forever and is your biggest fan, will also notice and positively respond to those changes – as long as they don’t have a lingering “marketing to women” essence.

Marketing to women is not a gender exclusive pursuit.  Rather, it guides even the most traditional industries, to serve the highest customer standard – and that should include and heighten the experience for men.

Here’s how I was quoted on the effort:

...using an emotional, rather than rational, approach “should work well for both young males and young females.” But she worries that the marketing may be short-selling both the car’s appeal and the younger generation’s values. Cube as “mobile device seems so cutesy, it feels somewhat inauthentic,” she adds.

On this note, I do see a trend in brands trying too hard to be cute/clever with their Gen Y-marketing.  That alone could lead to consumer mistrust and alienation (in not being taken seriously).  As with gender in marketing, generational differences can be very touchy – be wary of making broadbased assumptions.

Something is very different in designing and marketing gadgets and “apps” in today’s world.  Performance, while important, is no longer king, and consumers demand that the darned things fit into or ease their lifestyles.  Interestingly to me, that often means a re-think of a concept or product from its masculine beginnings toward the feminine sensibilities.  Mind you, that means this is no simple “marketing to women” change.

Instead, the thing to note is that lots of great products designed in years past came from minds mainly focused on performance, status, and making a super cool gee-gaw better than the competition’s.  If you were able to review research that drove so many product developments back then, it would likely be clear that not a lot of end consumers were involved in the process.  The designer/engineer knew better than some silly user, after all.  The result?  Gadgets and technology that have all the necessary specs and functions, but don’t easily fit the various ways people want to integrate them into their lives.

Remember those first PDAs, way back when?  Talk about shiny new object-phenomenon.  The manufacturers didn’t really start to “get” how consumers used them for several years – but they sure looked good as described in marketing material bullet points!

Anyway – 21st Century consumers are now calling manufacturers and designers on the carpet for this disconnect.

I came across one such story in the July/Aug issue of Fast Company.  It’s about the designers of the Fitbit Tracker – a pedometer times 10.  This activity monitor calculates steps taken, as well as calories burned and sleep patterns – all in a discrete package.  Gadi Amit (designer) and James Park (co-founder of Fitbit) were interviewed by FC about how they came up with this clever product.  As Amit and Park put it:

“Most pedometers are quite male-oriented.  They’re focused on numeric achievement and look like electronic gear.”

They went on to say that their perspective switch in designing Fitbit was to go from pure performance to a wellness-centered one.  Their product suits a more urban lifestyle, not just  a “fitness” situation.  Fitbit is made to disappear into a person’s clothing, “whether that’s an evening gown or a running shoe, effortlessly carried 24/7 by either gender.”

As brilliant as it should have been obvious to earlier pedometer designers, don’t you think?

In this one little product and case study, I see evidence of a wise, wise shift.  Simply marketing a fancier but same-old pedometer to women might have attracted initial attention from female consumers (while alienating men), BUT applying feminine sensibilities – which everyone has – in your re-design is the more effective way to gain trust and sales.  By doing so, your product will very strongly resonate with women, as well as the men who like the numeric/performance aspects (and who actually respond to the more lifestyle-y stuff too).

Slapping on a “pink-wash” would have been beyond short-sighted for the Fitbit.  But, doing the work to revisit the entire concept and truly understand how people will most use it in their lives gave their product the elusive women’s market approval… and so much more.

Is your logo “female” or “male?” If it’s got a little starburst-style element to it, and seems lighter and “happier,” feminine brain traits may have been involved.  And, right now, that could be an especially good thing.

A recent article in the New York Times covered a few big brand logo updates that have occurred in the past year or so.  As a passionate fan of most things design-related, it was fun for me to notice the softening of colors, and the lighter weight or more rounded-ness of fonts, for instance.  But, a follow-up letter to the editor in yesterday’s Times made me realize I’d missed something about how those decisions for change may have been made (and by whom).

In his letter, Rick Barrack, Chief Creative Officer of CBX Strategic Branding, pointed out that brand logos may well represent the personality of the chief executive who ultimately approves the new look.  He noticed the following about the such changes for Walmart, Kraft and SuperFresh, among others:

“The underlying theme with many of these new logos is that they came from companies with female chief executives.” He went on to say: “Female chief executives, with their cooperative, collaborative management styles, have brought a new point of view to their organizations and their logos.”

As writer Bill Marsh laid out in the original NYT article: the newer logos all have toned-down type, friendly flourishes and happier colors.  His particular point, which I think is as worthy as the CEO gender consideration, was that those details may have something to do with wanting to counter the gravity of the recession.  As in: No more harsh dark blue, let’s lively that up! (I’m so there.)

To me, this discussion represents a larger cultural shift I’ve been seeing lately, which reflects a different level of gender integration (for lack of a better way to put it at the moment).  Big, traditional, linearly (i.e. male) corporate brands are getting an infusion of fresh perspective.  The typically “feminine” style of thinking in cooperative and collaborative ways is now more heavily influencing corporate culture, leadership training, HR policies… on down to brand logo re-designs.

Whether it is due to the recession, or due to a few more women serving as executive decision-makers, this change has been a long time coming.   But, to me it can’t be just women alone who ponder logos and manage with more collaborative and cooperative viewpoints.  Rather, the more we spread the word about how companies are making such wise moves based on those “feminine” brain traits, the better for everyone.

It’s a whole new, extra-tough business climate these days, and brands and consumers alike deserve the extra friendly flourish a little feminine thinking might bring to their day – shopping or otherwise.

What Dan Pink and Oprah have to do with you is this: Pink offers a whole new way to consider gender in marketing, while Oprah has raised it up for the masses – who will likely take her up on reading the book, raising their experience and expectations of the world around them. These people, of course, are also those who buy your products.

What I find fascinating is that, with a simple change in word choice, polar opposites (men vs women) become two collaborating elements (men and women, left with right brain thinking – with the right side, in fact, doing the “guiding”).  While that is the way he and Oprah discuss the topic, Pink actually neutralizes the language a bit more in his book by calling these L and R-directed thinking (which I think is helpful).

In the just past information age, L-directed thinking (logical, linear) was rewarded in business and life, but now, in our “conceptual age,” R-directed thinking (emotional and relational) is more emphasized in personal and business realms.  The observations and predictions of Pink’s 2005 book have become more evident these four years later.  We DO live in a world where things like design and story matter MUCH more to humanity and that is seen in what today’s consumers expect from brands and marketing.

This could well be what goes through many a buyer’s mind these days:

“If you want my brand love or my hard-earned dollars, make your pitch a much richer proposition than facts and price. If your corporate values aren’t a fit, I can tell.  If your design pales in comparison to the level that, say, Apple, is delivering, I’ll ignore your products.  If you can’t match up some element in your or your customers’ stories with some element in mine, I’ll see if your competitors can.”

In fact, as I type, I’m also preparing for a storytelling panel at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference (PCBC) in mid-June.  End users, such as home purchasers or retail/commercial building shoppers or tenants, may well have previously been a demographic marketers treated as L-directed thinkers.  I doubt that that has ever really been the case, but wow – the world has significantly changed and most industries have to serve an R-directed decision-maker.  The “senses” that include design and story are top of mind to most consumers today (whether they realize it or not).  Yet, brands are ploddingly slow to develop their more R-directed efforts.

So, yes, let’s revisit the ideas in Pink’s book – as per Oprah’s recent nudge. Start to think of the consumer not in terms of gender, polarizing one from the other, so much as how he or she is a perhaps more R-directed thinker today.  When you make that assessment, it is easier to serve the way women may have been more likely to buy in the past without making it about only women.

R-directed equals being guided by women (as per the definition of transparent marketing in Don’t Think Pink – which is not a comment on the author of A Whole New Mind by any means).  Pursuing this idea and changing your marketing to better serve today’s consumers may well be easier when gender is left out of the conversation.  Right brain thinkers are already uniting and calling us to task.

1) A non-linear and more systematic approach.

2) Collaboration, not competition, focused.

3) The path is as important as the end goal.

Here’s my elaboration on idea #2:

2) Collaboration, not competition, focused. Competition is the traditional, patriarchal style for conducting business (in general), but—as seems to be a bit more innate with women—there may be even more potential when competitors band together to make change or solve a problem. Such a win-win collaboration speaks a woman’s language. Evolutionarily—it took a village to raise a child, after all …

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Check out the full post for more, at TomPeters.com. On either Tom’s site or here, let me know if this resonates with you or if you’ve seen this in your work with the women’s market.

Finding the right approach for gender-specific marketing can be really tricky.  Some brands go too far with the girlie stuff, and that’s when they start getting into trouble.

If you are interested in more on this topic, my post for MarketingProfs DailyFix blog just posted as well.  Plus, there is a lot of continuing discussion on Twitter. (I can be found there as: @AndreaLearned).

Josh Fruhlinger called me a few weeks back to talk about just that.  He’d noticed an oddly and overly female-oriented promotional effort for what looked like a laptop otherwise worth a look by any design-minded laptop buyer (and that means both men and women).  This got him wondering about laptop gender.

It was a fun interview for what turned out to be a great article for IT World.  One of my common refrains with regard to marketing anything to women was also appropriate in this instance:

“The challenge for so many consumer electronics companies is to be inspired and guided by the women’s market, but not alienate men.”

And, branding expert Denise Lee Yohn, also made several wise points, including this:

“Companies should take care not to over-emphasize the gender orientation of their products. To capture the widest appeal and to avoid reinforcing stereotypes that alienate, they should pursue specific styles and aesthetics that resonate with both men and women.”

So, before you launch a specific and “visible” marketing to women effort for your consumer electronic gizmo, read this article.  You may be saved by a little gender-neutrality in delivery – even if the inspiration is the women’s market.